"[Maladomini] is a druid's nightmare because everything natural has been defaced or destroyed in some way."

Planescape Campaign Expansion - Planes of Law: Baator (1995), Colin McComb

The privacy curtain parts in a rustle of velvet —

"Looks like you convinced him, then?"

— and Zevlor twists in his chair so sharply the rickety wood gives a worrisome crack.

"Looks like I did," crows Alfira, the words distorted by a wide and wicked grin. "Which means…" - she leans forward to slide Zevlor's empty tankard to the edge of the table - "…the next round's on you!"

Lakrissa, hands on hips, stares down Alfira's sunny triumph as if her own dark expression might eclipse it. But each woman knows the other too well. After a few beats of indistinct tavern sounds, Lakrissa's lips quirk into their signature sarcastic smile. She rolls her eyes.

"Fine. I'm good for it," she says, snatching up the tankard. "I'll have it to you just as soon as I can," and sashays off, tail bouncing behind her - all without sparing Zevlor's side of the table the merest half-glance.

Zevlor takes this in stride. It's the attitude of most of the surviving ex-Elturians, and he does not begrudge them for it. Although, he does heave a small sigh watching Lakrissa dart expertly through the Elfsong's crowd of tables, awayfrom the bar. He has a sinking feeling his second pint will be a long time coming.

"Let's skip ahead a bit, then," Alfira says briskly, flipping through her notes for some specific page. "To the goblins' attack on the grove."

Zevlor returns his attention to his drinking companion, and frowns.

"I thought you said you already had accounts of all the fights."

"What I said" - she points the wispy feather of her quill reprovingly at him - "is I need another angle. Yes, I know the basics of the battle from talking to the others, but descriptions of killings things is only so interesting. You need the pathos! What people are thinking and feeling while fighting for their lives!"

The lilting urgency is back in the bard's voice, and the colour is up in her cheeks. But Zevlor still remembers her blanch the last time the subject of violence was broached. Reading his thoughts, or his face, Alfira rolls her eyes - a startlingly accurate impression of her partner - and reaches for her own ale. She gulps perfunctorily, then sets it down.

"Look, the truth is…" Her eyes flick to the privacy curtains before saying, more quietly, "Lakrissa was really only there for the end, and all she could say about it was how it went too fast to think or feel anything. I figured youwould remember better. It was hardly your first fight, after all."

"No, it wasn't," but a turbulent note in Zevlor's tone discords his agreement.

It was not his first fight, not by decades, but it was his first anticipated battle since Elturel escaped Avernus; since his faith had failed, his paladin's oath shattered, and his soul was stripped of the holy power he had relied on most of his life. The sword strapped to his back felt heavier than Zevlor remembered, as if his body knew he was no longer worthy to wield it. Without taking his eyes from the horizon, he unbuckled his baldric and slung the whole affair onto a nearby barrel. He had only worn it out of habit and precaution. He would not need it should his plan succeed. And should it not … should the fight come close enough for swords … well, the extra seconds it took him to unsheathe it were hardly likely to make much difference.

"That's the last of the oil!"

Zevlor's eyes flicked to the environs below where Kaldani leaned on a shovel, panting, beside a mound of fresh-churned earth, then returned compulsively to the western skyline. But nothing had changed in the second he looked away. The dark mass he knew to be the goblin camp still belched its foul-smelling smoke into the breeze and expelled line after blurry line of swiftly moving dots - a goblin army - that shimmered like a black heat haze on the horizon as they marched in the direction of the grove. But this nightmarish vision made up only a small part of the lump currently weighing down Zevlor's stomach. No matter how hard he squinted, nor how far down the grove's rocky right flank he crept, he could not see what - whom - he sought.

"Alright, get back inside," he called down to Kaldani, voice hollow with resignation - but he could put it off no longer. "Then close the gate."

This last command was for Elegis whose boots he could already hear thudding across the bridge, the sound replaced within seconds by a grunting and creaking as the great wooden gate was lowered to the ground. It met earth with an echoing thud, like the final note of a sombre hymn, rousing Zevlor from his uneasy abstraction. He gave the wide expanse of hills and trees before him one last careful sweep before reluctantly withdrawing his gaze, turning in place, and inspecting the ramparts behind.

To his left, Asharak was toe-to-toe with Lakrissa and Guex, both loudly indignant at being relegated to what they considered secondary defensive positions guarding the hollow below; while to his right, Elegis, who had been assigned the ramparts, wrapped white-knuckled fingers around its wooden railing and looked as though she might be sick over its side. Zevlor grimaced and swivelled his head to watch Arka, across the bridge, load a crossbow with trembling hands; she dropped the bolt twice before succeeding.

And this was the line that stood between the Emerald Grove's inhabitants and a cruel, merciless death.

Zevlor's jaw clenched over criticisms there was no point voicing. These were not Hellriders, or even soldiers: they were scouts, and crudely trained ones at that. Their talents lay in staying out of sight; in avoiding danger, not staring it down. But they were the only help he had left. The druids, whose powers might have proved useful, had once more sequestered themselves in their caves. And Tav…

Zevlor could not stop himself. He turned to survey the environs again. He knew it would be nothing short of a miracle to see her standing there, rapier drawn, ready to lead them to another impossible victory. But miracles were Tav's bread and butter, and Zevlor had a taste for them now.

It was little more than a tenday since her first serendipitous appearance, but in that short time she had become an indisputable part of the refugees' camp. And more than a part. Zevlor privately considered her its newly beating heart and unbreakable soul. Though she and her companions had set up their own encampment further east, the better to spy on the goblins, she still returned to the grove every chance she had, and never empty-handed. She carted them what food and supplies she and the others had scavenged and could spare, and passed on 're-appropriated' armor and weapons they could not use or did not need. Once, she brought with her another new tiefling and veteran of Avernus - a prisoner of Zariel herself, Tav explained, with some infernal condition that required Dammon the blacksmith's help to stabilise.

And once in the hollow for whatever reason, she always found - or made - some excuse to stay: sparring lessons with the children, target practice with the scouts, the occasional after-supper song with Alfira, the camp's reclusive bard, whom Tav alone could coax from her rocks —

" Excuse me? I was nota recluse!"

"You were, and do you really want to argue the obvious or may I carry on so we can be done before last call?"

"… Fine."

— and, of course, her reports to Zevlor himself. Tav made a particular point of these. From her information, he updated his notes on the goblins, corrected his maps, and crossed the gnolls off his list of local threats - they drank a toast of Chultan Firewhisky to that. She also warned him off Ethel, the grove's sometimes-trader who was, apparently, a hag, and related what she had learned of the goblin's new god, the Absolute, and its following of 'true souls'. Concerning developments, both, but, as Zevlor had already discovered, it was hard to muster up any real anxiety with Tav nearby. Even in her absences, now, a whiff of her unassailable high spirits lingered, clinging to the people and places she visited like some invigorating perfume.

Which was why when she had proposed the previous day using the grove's goblin prisoner to infiltrate their camp at last, Zevlor had agreed without reservation, and had wished her good luck and farewell - another thing she made a point of - with only the mildest twinge of nerves. But when nightfall came, and Tav did not, worry began to stalk the borders of his newly repaired optimism. And when the first weak rays of pre-dawn light had revealed the goblin-aberrated skyline, its ominous implications for the grove and his people had been only half of Zevlor's distress.

Slow footsteps behind him made Zevlor's heart stutter, but they were too heavy and heavily-armoured to be the ones he so wanted to hear.

"They'll be on us soon, the rate they're going," Asharak, whose eyes were younger and sharper, announced grimly. "Anything else we should do to prepare?"

"Make sure all the arrows are brought up," Zevlor answered without turning. "Once the fighting starts, we won't have time to resupply. And assign Elegis and Arka quadrants so we're not all shooting at the same targets. We can't afford to waste ammunition."

He waited for Asharak's assent, or the sound of his heavy boots trudging off again to indicate he was carrying out instructions. But the only footsteps were far away and far below - probably the unhappy hollow guards' - and it took the slow, deep breathing over Zevlor's shoulder a minute to turn itself into words.

"You think there's a chance she's still alive?"

Zevlor's tail twitched. There was no question who Asharak meant.

"There's always a chance," he replied, though it came out less optimistic quip and more desperate prayer. "A slim one, I suppose, but … it is Tav."

The name argued for itself.

"I know what you mean," Asharak agreed solemnly. "Hard to imagine her caged or killed."

And the fear that had prowled the edges of Zevlor's mind since last night pounced in one stark image: the wet, bare, twilit body he had glimpsed a tenday ago - and which still regularly haunted his nights - sprawled limp and lifeless, defaced with mud and blood and worse, left to rot, forgotten, somewhere in that fetid goblin camp. It knocked the breath from his lungs. He had known, theoretically, this was the most likely scenario, but he had not truly believed it until he heard it said out loud. Nor had he known how much it would affect him. The last few months had made the once-Elturian an expert in adjusting to death and unanticipated loss. But to lose Tav? It felt impossible, and impossible to bear. She was more than just their best chance of survival, now; she had become their - his - friend. And to never again hear her voice coaxing them not to worry ... watch her tail swish freely as she played games with the children ... talk through his plans and predicaments with her … feel her warm hand on his arm ...

Zevlor reached blindly for the barrel at his side. His fingers found the sun-warmed pommel of his sword and gripped it hard; an anchor against the tidal wave of despair. Heart beating too loud in his ears, he only distantly registered the erratic footfalls echoing up the embankment behind him, or Asharak's exasperated growl —

"Bloody hells, Lakrissa, if you and Guex are so keen to see goblins up close, you can jump off the bridge and go meet them!"

— until the voice that panted back smashed through Zevlor's panic attack like a hammer through chains.

"It's neither … and … I'll pass, I think … seen enough goblins close-up … for a lifetime."

Zevlor spun gracelessly. His shaking fingers knocked his sword to the ground, but he was too busy stumbling forwards to meet his impossible, indomitable, and - per usual - bedraggled miracle to care. Tav's hair was wet with sweat, her armor with blood, her boots with some rancid, sludge-like substance he'd prefer not to name; and had she not doubled over in the patchy grass as soon as she reached him, hands on her knees as she fought for breath, Zevlor would have kissed her, he was that drunk on relief.

"God's above," he said as breathlessly as if he, too, had just run miles. "You're alive! A little light, just as the day seems darkest."

It took a moment, a swift look from Asharak and an odd whistling noise that might have been an airless laugh from the hunched-over Tav, for Zevlor to realise he had voiced this last whimsical thought aloud. He cleared his throat. His hand, stretched out instinctively to touch her, to confirm she was real, clenched into an awkward fist and fell to his side.

"I mean," he babbled on, "I'd given you up for dead at the goblin camp. I'm damn glad to be wrong. But ... how did you escape? And how did you get in without being seen?"

"Side door. Secret entrance. Back of the grove," Tav explained to her knees between gasps. "Comes out in the forest. Others are sealing it up now, but … there's no time for stories." She pushed herself off her legs with difficulty, face screwed up with more than lack of air as she announced, "Goblins are on their way."

"We know," Zevlor said swiftly. "Scouts saw them massing in the woods. What happened?"

Tav flinched away from him as if the question were an attack.

"We - I - it's my fault." The admission stuck hard in her throat. Tav swallowed. "Their leader, the drow - Minthara, she's called - she wants you all dead. I don't really understand why, but … she got in my head when I wasn't ready and she - she found the location of the grove. I couldn't stop her. I'm sorry." At Asharak's groan and Zevlor's involuntary oath, Tav's face twisted again as if their reactions caused her physical pain. Then words poured from her like undammed water. "We got the other two - the other leaders: that priestess Sazza talked about - Gut - and the hobgoblin, Dror Ragzlin. And we did find Halsin - is he here yet? He should be on his way. But there were just - just too many around Minthara for us to take on. And I thought it was better we make it here to warn you so you'd have - have time to …" She trailed away, raking back coils of dark hair stuck to her forehead with sweat before finishing, "I'm so sorry, Zevlor."

There was an unfamiliar misery in the way she said his name that Zevlor did not like and, more the surprise, did not share. He prodded his insides cautiously, expecting another up-swell of despair, or at least disappointment, at this setback, but all the morning's turbulent dismay was gone, subsumed in the vibrant, visceral joy of having Tav back, alive and safe. The hellish picture of her broken, beaten body passed again before his eyes, and his tail spasmed - whatever horrors marched their way paled in comparison to that.

"It doesn't matter now. You have nothing to apologise for," he said, and meant it. "A fight with the goblins was inevitable. And if it is to be bloodshed, I'm just glad to have you with us."

In a fit of boldness more characteristic of the breathless young woman in front of him, Zevlor stretched out his hand and, this time, let it meet her armoured shoulder. He squeezed once - an unpracticed but earnest gesture of comfort. His nails, in need of cutting, snagged the frayed edges of her old, cracked leather. Tav did not appear to notice. Her eyes were fixed on Zevlor's as he asked:

"If you are with us, that is?"

"Of course." There was no hesitation, no fear. She said the words like an oath of her own: "I'm all yours, whatever you need," and something in them sent a fiery frisson along Zevlor's spine, like the sun had slipped a sliver of ice down the back of his armor. He was abruptly conscious of the contour of her shoulder beneath his hand, the swell of her cuirass as her chest rose and fell, the spot of blood at the corner of her lips, which parted slightly as she watched him…

… and of Asharak's pointed cough from somewhere nearby, and the choir of frantic footsteps and laboured breathing that was Tav's companions scrambling up the sloping embankment.

Zevlor withdrew his hand quickly, grateful for skin that camouflaged heat, and if Tav shared any of his fluster, the wild mass of hair that collapsed across her face as she adjusted her cuirass concealed it. When she straightened again, she was the calm, collected, ready-to-aid Tav he had grown in such a short time to trust, to rely on, to need.

And what did that mean for after the battle? When - if - they won and his camp was free to leave?

But there was no time to entertain this fresh concern. The rest of the adventurers, all in their own states of weary dishabille, were congregated on the ramparts now, looking to Tav, who looked to Zevlor and asked, "So, what's the plan?"

"Lakrissa does have a point, you know," remarks Zevlor, glancing hopefully around as if the sound of her name might conjure her - and his ale - but her brightly coloured hair is nowhere to be seen. So he elaborates: "The mind works differently when facing down death. It blocks out the extraneous and hones in on the essentials: the enemy in front of you, the here and now. It's why good soldiers don't necessarily make good commanders. It takes a great deal of training to learn to stand outside the fight, see it from every side, every angle. To plan everyone's next steps, even as you take your own."

"It's a bit like composing, then," Alfira says, head tilted thoughtfully into her hand. "Or… more like conducting, I suppose, since that happens in real time, like a battle."

Zevlor, with his limited musical experience, initially finds this a dubious comparison.

"I suppose," he replies tactfully; then pauses, brow furrowed, and makes the connection for the very first time. "I suppose that's why Tav showed such a natural gift for it."

"We need to thin the goblin ranks as quickly as possible if we're to have any chance of survival," Zevlor explained. "Every ounce of oil we could spare has been buried below. The plan is to draw them in and pray our fire arrows strike true."

Tav blinked at him.

"That's your plan? Your whole military strategy is to … blow everything up?" She pressed a finger to her lips as if to hide the amusement playing round their edges, and concluded: "I can't decide if that's brilliant or mad."

Zevlor, still light-headed with relief and whatever had just passed between them, was surprised to discover his own shaky smile.

"Well, your courage is catching it seems. Or perhaps I've finally lost my reason."

Tav laughed a little at this, but there was no time for Zevlor to savour the sound. She was already moving: appraising the ramparts, the bonfires and barrels of arrows; craning her neck to survey the pockets of churned earth dotting the environs below, then out into the foredistance - Zevlor turned to follow her gaze - where the lines of goblins could now be clearly seen, crude axes strapped to their waists and wicked staves in their hands as they marched with uncanny cadence between the trees.

"Do you have a shooting rotation?" she asked briskly. "To save arrows? So we're not all shooting at once?"

"Quadrants," Asharak chimed in.

"Give Astarion one." She nudged the pale elf's shoulder where it was slumped against a barrel. "He's a dead shot."

"Alright. Take that spot on the rocks there, and cover the bottom right."

Asharak pointed in one, then another direction. The elf, looking simultaneously smug and disconcerted at Tav's praise, uncurled himself languidly and obeyed.

"Karlach." Tav turned to the newest tiefling. "You're with Astarion. Throw anything that's not tied down. It's two together," she added, raising her voice to be heard above the creaks of the bridge and the scuffs of weary boots. "One shoots while the other reloads. No one stands alone. Shadowheart, Lae'zel - same spot, other side, by Arka."

This earned the first cries of dissent —

"Tchk. I will not protect this -"

"You think I need your protection?"

—and the first application of real authority from Tav.

"Enough!" She planted her feet, raised her grime-smudged chin, and glared both women into sullen silence. "Learn to work together and quickly because I need you both over there."

Watching Tav issue orders with the same effortless inarguability it took most commanders years of practice to attain felt almost as voyeuristic to Zevlor as stumbling across her while she bathed, and inspired a similar physical effect. He made some subtle adjustments to his armor. Fortunately, the bridge was such a flurry of motion, no one saw.

"Gale - keep back there, behind the bushes. You're our reserve in case the arrows run out, and the first line if the goblins break through. Slow them down till we can regroup, and don't get shot or blown up before then. Got it?"

"Ah. An excellent choice."

"And Wyll —"

Zevlor, who had not noticed the Blade of Frontiers with the others, glanced up. He blinked, hard, afraid his eyes might finally have failed him; then, almost wished they had.

" — front and center with Asharak. Counter any spells the booyahgs cast and take out anyone the arrows miss."

The young man dipped his head - awkwardly; clearly still acclimating to the weight of the massive curling horns that had sprouted from it sometime in the last tenday.

"The Blade of Frontiers?" said Zevlor, stunned. "By Dhelt's Virtue. What happened Wyll?"

The sound of his name made Wyll look round. Zevlor caught a glimpse of red pupil and unmistakably infernal black sclera before he ducked his head again, answering dolefully, "I'm afraid I paid the price of angering the wrong devil," and sliding off to the place Tav had instructed.

Which sobering interaction safely cooled and dispersed the blood pooling in Zevlor's core. Pumping properly to his brain again, he made a more relevant observation: the wooden bridge was shivering beneath him. The vibrations carried through the thin-soled leather of Zevlor's boots and rattled the mail linked across his legs like so many tiny alarm bells. The goblins were upon them at last.

Instinct sent him for his sword. He found it where he'd left it: knocked from the nearest barrel and rattling gently in its baldric as the earth trembled under the scores of oncoming feet. He picked it up, reconsidered, propped it back against the barrel and reached for an unclaimed crossbow instead. He fitted a bolt to it thoughtlessly, eyes trained on the cloud of dust billowing around the western bend, when a warm presence manifested at his elbow; familiar enough to recognise without looking, and comforting enough without speaking to ease the tightness in Zevlor's chest.

"Well. Are you ready?" he asked Tav in grim anticipation; then, low under his breath, "Are we?"

"I think so. I mean - if you think so. You're the expert." Tav's voice, by contrast, was pitched slightly higher than usual. Zevlor, distracted, lowered his crossbow to peer down curiously at her. She was untying her short bow from the strip of leather wrapped thrice round her waist, fingers fumbling at the knot as she admitted, too light and too fast, "Believe it or not, this is my first foray into siege warfare, so I don't really have the first idea what I'm doing, to be honest."

Her bow free, Tav's hands took up position along the limb, bare fingers gripping the lacquered wood tight as if in reassurance. Her eyes, twin pools of glittering cobalt in the sunlight, found Zevlor's in much the same way; a way he was certain no one had ever looked at him before in his whole, long life. Tav wandered his face, drinking him in like an elixir of strength, tension thawing visibly from her shoulders for every second she stared.

Returning to his eyes, she smiled faintly and added, "I might be rather nervous without you here, I think. I'm glad we have you with us," and it was a heady, luxuriant sensation, like being drunk on expensive champagne, to be so clearly needed by the person, Zevlor knew with sudden clarity, he himself needed most.

"Don't worry," he said, and it felt good, emboldening to be the one to say it this time. "You're … much better at this than you think. We all are," he decided, glancing around. All the eyes of the ramparts - anxious, fearful, resolute - were on him, awaiting his final instructions, his encouragement, his praise. And, with Tav glowing at him like that, he felt, for the first time since leaving Elturel, capable of granting it.

"I know you are all afraid," Zevlor said, loud enough for his voice to carry across the ramparts and the sound of footsteps breaking over the environs like a wave. "But I also know," he continued, "you have been fighting your whole lives. We have never been handed the easy choices," - from the corner of his eye, he spotted the first small bodies, but pressed defiantly on - "or the gentle paths. And this is no different! These creatures…" He threw his arm at the goblin ranks swarming the empty space behind the valley's rocky outcrop, trampling grass, obscuring ground "…would take our lives, our children, our future. And we - must - resist!"

The final word was a snarl that rang over the susurrating sea of enemies; over the scattered cheers of the rallied ramparts' defenders - including Tav; over Zevlor's own invigorated heartbeat as he held her gaze.

Until another voice pierced the rousing echo like a splinter of ice.

"A pretty speech. It almost brings a tear to my eye."

A chill rippled down the back of Zevlor's neck. He swivelled in place, eyes sweeping the landscape, knowing before they settled what foe he would find. Sure enough, a dark blemish marred the verdant foliage of the rocky outcrop; a figure, standing still and erect in the exact same spot where Tav had first appeared. And if she had given the impression of a divine emissary, this woman might have been dragged from any level of the nine hells.

The drow. Her red eyes burned a hole near Zevlor's shoulder, but he knew it was not him she was glaring at. It was Tav.

"True Soul," she said, in little more than a strident whisper that nevertheless carried smoothly through the air. "You have one chance to survive. Slit his throat," - she jerked her chin at Zevlor - "and open the gate. The Absolute wants them all dead. In exchange," - she extended a flat palm the minimal distance from her body - a demonstration of benevolence - "I will allow you and the other true souls to live."

The seed of doubt in Zevlor's stomach had no time to take root before Tav stepped to the railing and stamped it out.

"These people are under my protection," she called down. And if the drow's voice was drenched in the sort of dread that cowed souls into obedience, Tav's hummed with a hope that urged them to their feet again and mocked dread's chains. "So you can take your one chance and stick it up your webbed arse, Minthara," she added, to a few guffaws and one call of "Fuck yes!" from her scattered companions. "And stay out of my head!"

"You think you can stand against me, and the Absolute?" The glacial voice quivered with indignant fury. "I'll dissect you."

This threat was undermined, however, by a whisper of wood and feathers through wind. Elegis, spurred by Tav's mockery, or Zevlor's speech, or simple nerves, had fired the battle's first shot. Though, a wave of the drow's hand and a haze of golden light turned the arrow from its course as easily as leaves on a breeze.

Zevlor's blood went abruptly cold. He knew that light - knew it as well as his own armor and sword. As if she could hear his thoughts, or sense some faded echo of similar power in his aura, Minthara adjusted her gaze to Zevlor's, and her pallid face twisted into a perverse counterfeit of a smile.

"Just imagine…" Lakrissa's melodious sarcasm inserts itself through the privacy curtains again. "If a bettershot had been assigned the ramparts - one who could actually hit the drow - the whole thing might have been over before it began."

Zevlor is more careful with his reply than he might be were Lakrissa not clutching his long-awaited pint.

"It would not have made a difference," he says simply. "Minthara was no goblin or two-bit warrior to be felled in one shot. She was a paladin."

A paladin, and a clearly experienced commander. The revelation stuck in Zevlor's gut like an arrow: a sharp, white-hot obstruction for which he had not planned. He had been relying on cunning and strategy to beat the horde of undisciplined goblins, but it was obvious within minutes this Minthara was just as knowledgeable in warfare as he.

Her first play was sappers - this, at least, Zevlor had anticipated - released in simultaneous, staggered runs, no two too close together. The first sortie was killed outright by overenthusiastic arrows before ever reaching the buried barrels of oil, and it was not until the pale elf, Astarion, held back one flaming shot, waiting for a bare-footed runner to reach a molehill-like mound, that the ground finally exploded in a spray of scorched earth. And worse. Zevlor shielded his face with his arm against a mist of dirt and something too sticky and wet to be dirt, ignoring Arka's far-off whoop. When the air had settled, he could see the effect was nowhere near as powerful as he had hoped. Despite the deep divot in the ground where a barrel and goblin had recently been, the radius of the blast was not large enough to injure any of the drow's restless but obediently waiting ranks.

Zevlor, positioning himself in the middle of the bridge for a better view, could make out Minthara's leer even through the dust and distance. She understood his plan, and he, hers. She would keep her main forces back, sacrifice her sappers, until their oil traps were exhausted. And even if they had enough arrows, they would not have the time to pick the entire army off one by one before they hacked a hole through the gate.

They needed another way to quickly thin their numbers.

A blur of motion drew Zevlor's attention: Tav - sprinting around him in the direction of the new tiefling and the pale elf. She caught Zevlor's eye as she passed, and he knew without a word between them their thoughts were the same. She took Karlach's place, handing Astarion arrows for the time it took the other woman to sprint away, then back, a barrelful of something better than oil hoisted over her head. Smoke powder. She hurled the barrel with impressive accuracy considering its shape and weight. The elf, too, proved a talented marksman: again, holding his lit arrow back until the barrel passed over the first rank of dumbstruck goblin heads. Then, he released.

And this was a real explosion. Zevlor's ears rang with it. Acrid smoke and debris of every size and texture enveloped the environs in a nauseating haze. Squinting through the lingering fug, a smile threatened Zevlor's lips at the craterous gap in the goblin ranks - the battle's first heartening sight. The second was the drow's smirk - flattened to a thin, taut line. But she had not moved, nor issued new orders, and her arms remained rigidly crossed behind her. She still considered herself firmly in control of the fight.

Lifting his crossbow again, Zevlor alternated between shots at sappers and occasional foot sloggers crossing Elegis' quadrant, and appraising the battlefield, his mind racing. The drow knew strategy. Her next move should be to disable her enemy's artillery, such as it was. Goblin archers had set up positions along the raised feet of the grove's cliff walls, but they were too low to succeed in hitting any of its defenders. A pointless waste of arrows. Yet Minthara did not stop them. Which meant, Zevlor understood too late, they were a distraction.

It happened in seconds - a throatless screech like something out of Avernus, a shadow overhead, then a series of not-quite-simultaneous thuds that rattled the wood under Zevlor's boots. Then screams. He whirled round, and wasted another precious second accepting the giant spider's existence. All eight of its legs, each as long as Zevlor's body and thick as his arm, were curled and tensed to strike. By the time he shook shock off himself and grabbed a crossbow bolt from a barrel, it was already scuttling down the grove's right flank. It sent Astarion scampering for the bushes; bowled over Karlach, who tried and failed to grapple it over the side of the cliff; then rounded on Tav's drawn blade.

Zevlor fired. The bolt hit the monster in the back, glanced off its mottled green carapace, and careened uselessly to the environs below. Which did not bode well for Tav's slender rapier. Fear compressed Zevlor's chest, but he was an expert at fighting through it - in pitched battle, at least. Instinctively, he reached inside himself for fiery power and over his shoulder for his sword. Hand and spirit both closed on nothing. Reality re-introduced itself with a punch to Zevlor's gut. He had no divine spark anymore, and his sword - he stared about wildly - was safely encased in its baldric and propped against a barrel a few paces away.

A chittering screech announced the spider's pounce; a crunch and a thud, Tav's inelegant fall. Then she was gone, vanished under the enormous, bulbous body, and her strangled yelp stung Zevlor like he, too, had been punctured by fangs. He hurled the crossbow with all his might at the spider's back and prayed to any listening gods it bought him time - seconds, anything, please - just enough to get him to his sword, unstrap the baldric with fast, practiced hands, and spring down the cliff; arms raised, not to smite, but to hack, crude as a goblin, at a hairy branch-like leg. He felt the limb snap - the vibration rattling up his sword arm - before he heard it: like the breaking of a cart axle; swiftly followed by another high screech, this one of pain.

The spider skittered around to face him. Zevlor ducked a swipe from another leg and adjusted his stance. As the creature darted forward, he danced back, dodging its pincers, pivoted roughly in the raised dirt and brought his dull sword down on its many black-orb eyes. His own mortal strength was, blessedly, enough. The spider's legs buckled under the force of the blow. Then, with a sound like the ripping of heavy leather, it simply collapsed; its body hitting the cliff's packed earth with a wet, sickly splat.

Vile-smelling ichor sprayed Zevlor's legs. He tripped hastily backwards, readying his sword again as something shifted in the tangle of lifeless, too-long limbs. Then he spotted the flailing tail. It was Tav. The worry in Zevlor's stomach unwound. He hurried forward, found her hand - ignoring its slick coat of spider innards - and pulled her out from under the corpse and to her feet. Tav swayed a little as she stood, using Zevlor's arm for balance, but a quick scan showed him no obviously fatal wounds. Wiping ichor from her eyes, she found his and smiled her thanks. Then she was off, shaking strands of black gore from her rapier as she hobbled towards the bridge, barking instructions as she went:

"Astarion - back to position. Karlach - cover him. Wyll - help Arka with the other spider. It's weak along its underside!"

Zevlor retrieved his crossbow and followed in Tav's bloody wake. At the bridge, he tore his eyes from her back and scanned the outcrop for Minthara's reaction. Her pale face betrayed her fury. Uncrossing her arms at last, she gestured at her remaining ranks - only half the numbers she started with, Zevlor noted in surprised satisfaction - and, from somewhere, a war drum began to pound. It thumped over the death screech of the second spider, and the cries of the goblins now rushing both cliff flanks and the main gate en masse.

But these incautious assaults only strengthened Zevlor's surge of elated confidence. The drow was scrambling. The loss of her spiders had goaded her into angry, retaliatory action. And emotion in battle was how even the best commanders made mistakes.

"I still say it would have been over quicker if everyone who wanted to had been allowed to fight."

"Lakrissa…"

Irritated at her partner's unhelpful interjections, Alfira gave her a meaningful look and an unsubtle jerk of the head - back towards the bar.

"We had a limited number of bows and had to choose who best to use them." Zevlor recites the words tiredly into the women's charged silence. He has given this answer more than once before, and to the same mutinous glare. "Asharak knew everyone's individual talents best, and chose those he thought would have the greatest chance of success."

"Those who wouldn't talk back, you mean," Lakrissa retorts.

Zevlor bristles.

"Those most likely to follow orders and not resort to reckless heroics, yes."

"Not resort to reckless heroics? Tav?"

Lakrissa's laugh is a mirthless, near-hysterical snort. A froth of ale spills over the side of the tankard she still holds. Zevlor grimaces at both. He bites back the angry rejoinder ready on his tongue in deference to his hostage pint. Besides, there's too much unfortunate truth in this accusation to argue.

"Lae'zel!"

It was not the name which froze Zevlor's blood. It was the voice that cried it and its audible anguish. Fighting to see through the bitter fog now permanently hung over the ramparts, he made out Tav, perched on the furthest bit of rock the grove's right flank offered, one arm outstretched as if casting a spell. If she did, it had no effect. Zevlor followed the line of her hand in time to watch the githyanki leap from the opposite clifftop all the way to the distant, hazy ground.

She landed hard. Zevlor's own knees twitched in empathy. She was back on her feet in seconds, but it was evident even through fog and distance something in her leg had bent or snapped. Regardless, she set off on her strangely shiny boots at a speedy limp, intent on climbing the rocky outcrop to reach the looming drow. The bugbear playing Minthara's personal guard was already lumbering down the slope to meet her, club held high, but Minthara herself had not glanced at the would-be assassin. Her red eyes, hellish pinpricks in the polluted air, were locked on the distraught Tav, and Zevlor could see the calculations taking place behind them. Or, perhaps, he simply knew what a more ruthless, unprincipled commander would do next.

Minthara raised her arm a second time.

"Get the gith!"

At once, the sharp-eyes left on the ledges swiveled to face this slight, green-skinned target, and the remaining skirmishers abandoned their attempts to climb the cliffs or hack through the gate and scurried to obey this new command. Zevlor did not wait to watch their progress. He, too, had eyes only for Tav. Wild, gore-streaked hair bobbed behind her as her head flicked between Lae'zel, the goblins tearing in her direction, and the drow. She dropped her bow and drew her rapier, and Zevlor knew, with a plummet of dread, what she was going to do. He broke into a run, though he knew he would not make it. Tav had already pulled a scroll from a pocket and was shaking it open with her free hand.

"Tav, no! Don't!" he shouted, but whether she did not hear his command or chose to ignore it, Zevlor never found out.

She stepped off the cliff and was gone...

...reappearing in a gust of wind that cleared the fog from the edge of the rocky outcrop; exactly where Zevlor had feared. Rapier at the ready, she lunged for Minthara. Who smiled in malicious triumph, and knocked the thin blade askew with an easy parry of a heavy-headed mace.

Zevlor's feet and brain both skidded to a halt. He watched this new nightmare, transfixed. And understood at last what Tav had meant when she said swords were not her forte.

Her stance was a competitive duelist's, not a soldier's. Her footwork was graceful, her advances precise, but she lacked the raw strength necessary to counter a true weapon of war. In seconds, the mace's ferocious blows had reduced Tav's strategic attack to a desperate defense. She ducked and dodged, tail whipping behind her as she dove in and out and around the smaller woman: a dance intended to tire her partner. But this was a tactic more suited to bugbears and ogres than a dexterous drow. Already, Minthara was catching Tav's rhythm, anticipating her next step and beating her to it, forcing her back.

Zevlor raked nails through his hair, trying to clear his head of panic, think through potential counters, possible maneuvres. But there were none. Both Tav and Minthara were out of reach of any of the ramparts' defenders. There was nothing he could do to help or hinder from here. The dread lodged in Zevlor's chest was one he had rarely felt in battle. This would be no calculated casualty; no lamentable, but inevitable loss. This was Tav. He had tasted her death that morning; he did not think he could bear to do so again.

Divine light - brilliant, beautiful, and tantalisingly familiar - pulsed from Minthara's mace in white-hot waves. She swung in a furious arc, grazing Tav's elbow as the tiefling turned a second too late. Tav's mouth dropped in a gasp Zevlor could not hear but could feel rattle his ribs. Then, as if some higher authority had bypassed his brain and given its orders directly to his body, Zevlor's hand fumbled for his sword, his legs moved him down the bridge, his mouth fell open, words spilling out of their own accord:

"Open the gate!"

"What?"

Wyll, who stood closest, turned, face twisted in confusion, but Zevlor had already flung himself down the ladder one-handed, the other holding tight to his maddeningly unempowered sword. He yelled again as he descended - "Open it! Now!" - fully aware he was committing the drow's earlier mistake. He jumped the last rungs, hit the earth hard, and pushed off it without stopping - his body would hate him tomorrow, but tomorrow would not be worth living if Tav did not make it through today.

He reached the gate as it parted from the blood-soaked earth. It creaked up with excruciating slowness, as if it, too, thought this a bad idea. Zevlor ignored it; ignored, as well, the indistinct cries from overhead and behind. He would let no one stop him. As soon as a large enough gap between gate and ground appeared, he ducked and rolled himself through.

Outside was another world. If the ramparts above were draped in fog, the valley below was choked to death with it, its thick cloak muffling sound and sight. Even the midday sun could not fully penetrate the smoke, making the sky look like a poor artist's rendering of Avernus done in charcoal and ash. What was visible of the ground was pitted and pockmarked as though pummeled repeatedly by a giant's hand. But Zevlor had no feeling to spare for the devastated landscape. He squinted up at the rocky outcrop - the only clear spot in the environs, lit as it was by the frigid, blue-white glow of Minthara's mace as she charged relentlessly forward.

Zevlor picked as fast a path as he dared past the holes and hills of displaced earth and piles of small, charred bodies, eyes ahead of him, watching in terror as Tav lost speed. Her tail drooped behind her trembling ankles. She dodged back and sideways - a fencer's defensive circle - but her feet stumbled where once they had danced. And whatever cruel god Minthara served was lending her increasing strength. Her mace grazed Tav again, this time along her thigh. Her leg buckled -

- just as a scimitar swung out of nowhere, heading for Zevlor's knees. He sidestepped on instinct. A thoughtless swing of his sword carried off the attacker's head mid-howl. His arms barely registered the strain. Eyes on Tav as she rolled to avoid a slam of the merciless mace, her rapier lost in the struggle, Zevlor was only vaguely aware of his own enemies emerging from the thick fog - goblins, a ragged, rank-less mob of them, no doubt drawn away from the gith and their orders by the raising of the gate - and equally inattentive to the dark, eldritch energy that soared by him, singeing his hair, before blasting a sulfurous hole in the center of the onrushing horde.

"Zevlor, on your left!"

He swerved right without processing who had spoken, or who was beside him, or behind him, or raining arrows and magic missiles and assorted blunt objects down on the goblins' heads from above. Every piece of the oathbroken paladin concentrated on the tableau atop the high rocks, as if he might hold it in place until he could get there: Tav, sprawled in the ash-and-blood sprinkled grass, hands pressed to her side, Minthara leering over her, bathed in the glow of her mace's hideous, holy light. But Zevlor had no power. No faith. No time to pray had there been a god he thought would listen to him. Minthara's arms stretched overhead, ready to deal a double-handed blow - then, froze, as a roar of rage from the smoke-shrouded western bend made her, and everyone else in the environs, look round.

The bestial bellow reverberated through the valley. The pounding of paws that accompanied it shook the mounds of precarious earth. Left and right, goblins crouched, hands over their heads in instinctual fear, but the massive cave bear lumbering towards them recognised no surrender and offered no mercy. It trampled every body in its way: frozen or fleeing, living or dead. And in the seconds it took Zevlor to absorb the scene and find the rocky outcrop again, its muzzle was already stained with goblin blood.

Minthara, too, had turned from the carnage back to her target. But her seconds' hesitation had been enough time for Tav. As the drow swung down, the tiefling surged upwards and under her guard, reclaimed rapier extended, and Minthara's own momentum impaled herself upon it. Tav pushed with all the force her injured body could muster. Her blade lodged to the hilt. It might have been delirium, but Zevlor fancied he could see its tip emerge between the drow's suddenly slack shoulder blades as she dropped to her knees.

Of course, the power of a paladin to heal could not be underestimated. Light - warm and gracious - swelled already in Minthara's blood-blacked hands. Zevlor was mid-step, a warning to Tav on his tongue, when Lae'zel materalised beside her and brought her own massive great sword down - once, twice, thrice - on the pale, unprotected head. The light faded, and Minthara's body crumpled in a shallow pool of bloody grass.

Zevlor breathed. It was the first time air had fully filled his lungs since Tav's jump, and he coughed at its noxious taste. Perception washed over him in waves: the bear's continued roars; the Blade of Frontiers cheering over his shoulder; Lakrissa or Guex, he could not tell which, jostling his elbow as both charged past, chasing the scattered goblin stragglers beating a hasty retreat; Tav - impossible, indomitable, bedraggled Tav - making her way down the rocky outcrop, one arm around Lae'zel, though who supported whom was difficult to say; the sound of his name being called from behind him. Zevlor turned dazedly to face the gate.

Its open mouth was filled with figures, like jagged, overlapping teeth, just visible through the fog. The other refugees. The civilians. The people Zevlor had promised to protect. Who ought to be hiding in caves in the hollow and, instead, stepped forward as one body; makeshift clubs, spears, and shivs slack at their sides. A violation of his direct command, the thought occurred automatically. But, then again, these weren't his Hellriders; or even soldiers. They were his family. And Zevlor thought he might burst with the breadth of his affection for them all.

"Is it over? Did we win?" Kaldani's voice called cautiously through the dense cloud.

"We - we did," confirmed Zevlor, voice cracked and raw. Then, "We did it!" he repeated, louder, enjoying the feel of the words. He stared compulsively back over his shoulder at the woman limping slowly his way, and felt another upsurge of affection; and something else, he knew he could no longer avoid giving a name. "Watching gods, you did it."

"I remember that speech." Lakrissa pushes off the booth's barrier where she's leaned for the last few minutes, listening to the end of Zevlor's account. "It was … good," she finishes carelessly, and deposits his tankard in front of him at last.

"She called it inspiring when she first told me about it," chirps Alfira. "And she's not an easy one to impress."

Lakrissa rolls her eyes again, and resumes her quirked sarcastic smile.

"You know who else it inspired?" she says, voice leaking mischief. "Tav. I remember that, as well. All over blood, and couldn't keep her eyes off you while you talked. Then you told her ... something … what was it you said?"

"I … what?"

Startled by this sudden onslaught of near-civility, Zevlor's memory stutters. Lakrissa, impatient, shakes her head.

"Oh, come on! Something about ... how she would always have family in Baldur's Gate? There was more, I can't remember it all - just Tav looking like she'd float right off the ground. I started the pool after that."

"The pool," repeats Zevlor non-plussed.

"Lakrissa!"

Alfira hisses her name like a warning. Her partner plows on, unabashed.

"The betting pool. On you and Tav. I mean," - she tosses back her long fountain of hair - " it was obvious you were both mad for each other, that was never a question. But, after that little display, I started a pool for when the two of you would do something about it. It was quite popular. Would've made a mint had half the contributors not been slaughtered before we found out who won." Lakrissa's tone is suddenly fierce again. Her eyes flash as she leans over the table, pointing a finger between its two startled occupants. "That's the only reason I've given any of this my blessing, by the way. I didn't want her associating with you. But she promised we'd finally know for sure when it happened and be able to settle up the outstanding bets."

"I see," says Zevlor hoarsely, digesting this information, unsure whether to be indignant, outraged, or amused. "And … what was your money on?" he asks Lakrissa, still deciding.

"Same day. At the party after the fight. The night before we left."

For the first time since arriving at the Gate, Lakrissa looks Zevlor in the eyes, and behind her belligerent defiance, he can see curiousity burning to rival her partner's. Zevlor picks up his tankard and sips. Then, it's his turn to smile.